Harbor by John Lindqvist (classic novels for teens txt) 📕

and looked up at the ceiling, which was not stained with smoke or marked by cobwebs, but was a beautiful white ceiling of carefully laid tongue and groove. Exactly the kind of ceiling he liked best.

He could sit next to Maja, he could look at her and touch her, but he couldn’t reach her. Their worlds were not permitted to meet.

But she came to me. I knew she was there. She came to me. Through the water.

Everything within him became still. The disappointment and frustration faded away. He tried to see it, tried to think.

She came to me…

He raised his head and looked at the little blue figure next to the bed who had now picked up a heart-shaped bead tile and was busy pressing beads into place. Maja.

But this was not Maja. The person who was Maja, who had memories and pictures and who could talk, had come to him, had somehowmanaged to escape into the sea. What was sitting by the bed was only her body, or that part of her that was necessary to enable him to see what he wanted to see.

Maja?

There was a point where both worlds collided and mingled together. That point was himself, since she existed within him. He closed his eyes and searched for her.

We’re not playing hide and seek any more, little one. You can come out. Out you come! The game is over, it’s safe now.

He concentrated on what had happened with Elin. The thing that had been in the bucket, that had been forced out of her and had to be returned to the sea. Somewhere inside him was something similar. He called to it now, searched in the darkness of his own body.

Where are you…where are you…

Like the silvery flash of a fish in the net far below the surface, he caught sight of it. It was dispersed throughout his entire body, but he approached it from all directions at the same time and made it come together, gather into a formless, hovering mass that he could take hold of and localise with his consciousness. It was in his stomach now, circling around the insect down there that was floundering and thrashing about in a panic.

Everything around him was gone, was unreal. His strength and his thoughts were focused on one single thing: holding on to something intangible. As he moved towards Maja’s body on the floor, his eyes closed, he had to divert a minute amount of his attention to his own movements, and the other thing threatened to slip from his grasp like the eel had slipped through his father’s fingers.

He pushed away the eel, couldn’t think about the eel, couldn’t think about his own knees as they slid across the floor, couldn’t hope or wish for anything as his fingers once again moved over Maja’s body until he was sitting right in front of her. He still hadn’t lost his grip, she was still there in the darkness in his hands, in his mind as he leaned forward and placed his mouth over hers.

Come. Out.

He pushed it in front of him, up from his stomach, up through his throat, and he really could feel it like a little body, a stream of silky liquid sliding over his tongue, out through his lips and into her mouth.

He gasped and collapsed. Part of him had left his body. He didn’t dare look. There was nothing more now. He closed his eyes, and there was only silence. Then he heard Maja’s voice:

‘Daddy, what’s the matter?’

Slowly he opened his eyes. Maja was sitting there looking at him with a puzzled frown.

‘Are you sad? Why have you got Bamse?’

He looked into her eyes. Her hazel eyes that were looking enquiringly at him. A large body shifted position, and a shudder ran through the world.

The rattle that emerged from his throat told him that he too was now capable of producing sound. Maja’s concerned expression was on the point of tipping over into fear, because he was behaving so oddly. He swallowed down everything that wanted to come spurting out of him, pulled Bamse free and held him out to Maja.

‘I brought him for you.’

Maja grabbed Bamse and hugged him, rocking back and forth. Anders could hear a faint rustling as her elbows moved across her knees, he leaned towards her and smelled the familiar scent of her shampoo. He stroked her cheek.

‘Maja, sweetheart…’

Maja glanced up, looked at him. Another shudder passed through the house and he felt it as a powerful vibration in the floorboards. Maja screamed.

‘What’s that?’

‘I think…’ said Anders, taking her hand and getting to his feet, ‘…I think we have to go now.’

Maja was pulling away. ‘Where are we going? I don’t want to go!’

The house shook, and Anders saw the poker fall over next to the fireplace. Maja’s piles of beads collapsed and mixed together, and shefreed herself from his grasp so that she could start sorting them out again.

He bent down and picked her up. She kicked and protested in his arms, but he took no notice, he held her close to his body and ran through the house, towards the front door.

He was through the garden and running down towards the steamboat jetty when Maja relaxed in his arms and started to laugh.

‘Gee up, Daddy!’ she screamed, clicking her tongue.

He heard the sound of his own feet moving along the track, but he was no longer running on gravel. The gravel was disintegrating, collapsing in on itself, and the lilies-of-the-valley along the edge of the track wilted, were drawn down to the ground and disappeared.

He took the shortest route across the rocks, but they had become dark and slippery. The sky was dissolving like a cloud in a storm. Down by the jetty, two people in old-fashioned clothes stood screaming at each other as they looked around in terror.

Everything except the people was shrinking and imploding in slow motion, and as Anders ran out towards the boat with Maja in his arms, he saw